The appearance of solid hardwood as a flooring material or plank-style paneling for interior walls of a room has long been popular. In manufacturing such flooring or paneling, large pieces of raw lumber (logs or rough cut boards from logs) are cut into a plurality of planks of the desired nominal width and thickness. Any knots or other blemishes which are present in the raw lumber can be seen on these individual cut boards.
For decorative purposes such as flooring and paneling, however, such blemishes are undesirable because they detract from the appearance and structural integrity of the wood. To eliminate these blemishes, the portions of these planks which include visible knots and the like are cut out and discarded or used for other, less aesthetically demanding purposes. Thus, the resulting product includes planks of random lengths, depending on the size and quality of the original, raw lumber.
When the blemished wood is cut out of the long planks, the ends of the planks are commonly cut such that they will mate with the end of an adjacent plank when installed. This mating end construction may be of the tongue and groove type described in more detail below.
These random length planks of rough-hewn lumber are then usually subjected to further manufacturing steps, such as planing or jointing, sanding and sometimes finishing (such as with stains and/or varnishes or other protective coatings), to yield the desired appearance. Because of this highly selective process for producing planks without knots or other blemishes, such solid hardwood planks are both highly desired and tend to be relatively expensive.
Due to the random-length nature of these planks, packaging the product for sale also increases the expense. These planks are commonly sold at retail to consumers in kits having sufficient random length planks to cover a certain predetermined surface area, such as 50 square feet or 100 square feet. In order to assemble and package such kits, a worker must determine the length of numerous individual planks and attempt to select a combination of these varied panels which yields a surface area as close as possible to the desired square footage. In so choosing a set of panels, the worker may not err on the lower side of the stated square footage or else an individual purchasing that particular set of planks will not receive the quantity of paneling indicated on the packaging.
This selection process is time consuming (thus increasing labor costs), results in bundles to be packaged that have non-uniform configurations (making the packaging process difficult and time consuming), and necessarily requires the continual inclusion in each kit of planks of more wood than is stated on the package.
In order to minimize these difficulties, manufacturers will often cut the planks in nearly random lengths which vary by a preset increment, such as 3" or 6", rather than producing truly random length planks. This does help reduce the time spent in selecting planks to create a kit having the desired surface area and minimizes the excess planking included in each set, but it also significantly increases raw material costs. When producing truly random length planks, the blemishes may be excised from the rough-hewn planks without losing much of the clear, or blemish-free, wood. By cutting the planks to lengths which vary by a preset increment, however, that incremental length must be cut away when removing a visible flaw. For example, if a 6" increment is used, a 6" length of the plank must be cut away to remove a blemish. This obviously leads to the loss of a significant amount of clear wood along with each blemish, greatly increasing the raw material costs of the final planking.
The use of a veneered paneling product is often economically attractive Such veneer paneling utilizes a thin covering of high grade, blemish-free wood. This covering is laminated to a lesser quality wood backer which provides structural support to the veneer. The wood backer may include a larger number of knots or other blemishes since it is not visible after installation. By using only a thin veneer of "clear" wood (i.e., wood which is substantially free of any visible blemishes), the yield of square feet of clear wood per cubic foot of raw lumber used is greatly increased, reducing the raw material costs of the product. Labor costs are also reduced by using a veneer. The veneer paneling is commonly produced mechanically into panels of uniform dimension. This eliminates the time consuming process of selecting individual planks to be combined into a kit having a certain surface area.
However, veneer paneling is often perceived to be of lesser quality than solid wood paneling. A wall or a floor which is covered with solid wood tends to have distinctive appearance due to the random, or nearly random, length planks which make up such a covering. In contrast, when a veneer is used, rather than solid wood, the individual sections comprising the covering typically will all be of a substantially uniform, mechanically produced dimension. Thus, the absence of the individual, random length panels is a telltale sign that the paneling or flooring is not made of a genuine solid hardwood.
Furthermore, certain decorative effects may not readily be achieved by veneers. One popular design for paneling includes beveled edges. When hardwood is used, all four of the edges of the individual planks may be provided with a bevel, which may be on the order of 1/8 inch or more in depth. Since the exterior, clear wood of veneer paneling tends to be quite thin, if one were to attempt to bevel such a veneered panel, the lesser quality wood beneath would be exposed. Thus, the presence of beveling on the edges of planks is another indicator that visually distinguishes solid planking from veneer.
Thus, solid wood paneling comprising a plurality of beveled planks of random lengths is not only visually appealing, but provides an appearance which may not readily be achieved by commonly produced veneer paneling. However, the installation of such hardwood paneling is rather labor intensive, further driving up the ultimate cost of the paneling to consumers. Veneer panels often come in rather large sheets which may readily be applied to a wall to cover large surface areas in a short period of time. When using genuine, solid wood as paneling, though, each of the individual planks must be separately affixed to the wall or the floor being covered. Depending on where the knots or other visible blemishes are located along the length of the rough-hewn planks when cut from the raw lumber, the length of the individual planks being applied as paneling may vary greatly, and some of the planks may be rather short. It takes just as much effort to affix such a short plank to the wall or floor as it does to install a larger plank. Thus, the need to individually apply each and every plank to the surface being covered significantly increases the cost of installing hardwood paneling or flooring. Combined with the labor and raw material costs described above, solid wood paneling or flooring typically can be quite expensive.